Hats off to Mr. Sridhar for conceiving something as beautiful and practical as the Bloom Box. Hope it ‘energizes’ the world in the right direction.

India-Born Scientist Launches Sand-Based Electricity Maker
Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN

Washington: Some beach sand minted into floppy-sized ceramic tiles, a coating of secret ink, and just about any fuel — enough to crank out electricity in your home or business without the old-fashioned transmission grid. Bloom Energy’s CEO K R Sridhar calls it “powder-to-power”, a new form of clean, reliable electricity made locally rather than at distant power plants, thus reducing the need for new transmission lines and relieving pressure on the existing grid.
Presenting a technology that he claims will revolutionize energy industry in much the same way cellphones changed communications, the India-born scientist-entrepreneur on Wednesday formally launched the “Bloom Box”, at a Bay Area event attended by Silicon Valley digerati and California governor Arnold Schwartnegger among others.
“What people need to understand is we are not building a company, we are building an industry,” Sridhar told the elite gathering, after whipping the covering off a glass case filled with beach sand with the floppy disk sized ceramic tile buried in it. The tile, coated with different coloured secret inks that act as an anode and cathode, forms a basic unit of a fuel cell. They are stacked together to scale into a power box that can range from a bread-loaf sized unit to a much larger arrangements the size of a refrigerator or a truck.
Power is generated through an electrochemical process when natural gas or other fuel is injected into the unit. Several US companies already using Bloom Boxes, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, and Google, endorsed the technology at the event hosted by eBay, but questions centered on costs.
Sridhar said the Bloom servers can provide electricity at 9 to 10 cents (about Rs 4; which is about the same as in India currently) per kilowatt hour, compared with 14 cents for power from the grid. But that includes subsidies from the state, which Sridhar maintained is necessary for any new industry till costs come down.
That could take up to a decade. Bloom boxes currently being used by companies such as eBay which produce 100 kilowatts of power enough for 100 homes cost $700,000 to $800,000 (about Rs 4 crores) per unit.
The kind of bread-loaf sized individual unit a home energy server — that Sridhar waved around which can power an individual home will take five to ten years to materialize and may cost around $3000 (about Rs 1.25 lakhs). “Dont go running to place your order just yet,’’ Sridhar joked.
However, what has electrified green buffs and renewable energy mavens is that the Bloom Box can generate electricity from multiple fuels while producing relatively few greenhouse gas emissions.
And unlike solar panels and wind turbines, each server can produce the same amount of energy day and night for years on end, according to the company, which also claims the process is twice as efficient as burning natural gas.

Article source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2010/02/26&PageLabel=17&EntityId=Ar01700&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

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